Elmhurst offers update on stormwater project

The City of Elmhurst, in a continuation of its ongoing citywide flood-mitigation effort, has begun engineering design for two additional major stormwater improvement projects that will be built in 2020 and 2021.

The first project is located in the Saylor/Swain/Vallette neighborhood in the city's southwest side.

Recently, the city has purchased five homes in this area where the city is planning to use new underground storage to reduce flooding.

Construction is expected to begin late summer of 2020.

The second project is located in the College View neighborhood, directly west and north of York High School.

The city entered into an intergovernmental agreement with Elmhurst Unit District 205 in 2019 that will allow the city to use the open grass field location directly south of the school for underground storage to reduce adjacent neighborhood flooding.

These two construction projects will significantly reduce structural overland flooding for 110 homes and will create an additional 17 acre-feet of new detention storage.

When these projects are complete, the city will have in total completed 13 stormwater improvement project aimed to reduce and eliminate structural overland flooding for 463 homes.

These projects have created 129 acre-feet capacity of stormwater detention storage which is the equivalent to nearly 100 football fields covered with 1 foot of water.